Blame game begins

When members of Congress rose last week to read sections of the Constitution, the portion that fell to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was the First Amendment.

Then the Arizona Democrat returned to her district and on Saturday morning set about putting it into practice, giving her constituents a chance to “assemble” and to speak their minds at an event she dubbed “Congress on Your Corner” - held in a supermarket parking lot.

Today Giffords is in a Tucson hospital after a bullet pierced her brain. Her survival is nothing short of miraculous, even as her life is changed forever. In all six people were killed in the assassination attempt on Giffords, including a federal judge - a friend of Giffords who by all accounts had just stopped by to say hello - a 9-year-old girl and one of Giffords’ aides. Another 14 people were wounded.

It is heart-wrenching, especially because Giffords is one of those politicians who commanded respect and affection on both sides of the aisle.

Why was she in particular targeted by Jared Loughner, a deeply troubled 22-year-old with a history of being rejected by the military, tossed out of two schools and well known to police? To ask the question is to attribute rational thought to someone who would write on an Internet posting, “I know who’s listening: Government Officials, and the People. Nearly all the people, who don’t know this accurate information of a new currency, aren’t aware of mind control and brainwash methods.”

But that won’t stop the cynical and the politically addled from somehow blaming this carnage on the Tea Party or Sarah Palin or talk radio or the alleged “lack of civility” in politics.

What hideous nonsense - not to mention ignorance. Who would be blamed if the demented mind of this gun-toting pothead had fixated on a Republican member of Congress? Where would the fault lie then?

Gabrielle Giffords nearly gave her life to preserve the very rights she talked about on the House floor last week - free speech and assembly. Lively debate has always been at the heart of true democracy. To temper that debate so as not to unduly rile every attention-craving lunatic is to pander to those who simply hate losing an argument or an election.